1. Technical Field
Aspects of the present invention relate to exchanging components among platforms where the components provide services to user terminals.
2. Related Art
Users desire different types of services; from sending and receiving emails to downloading and watching movies, network operators provide these services to users through different combinations of components. Each component may provide a service or a part of a service to the end user. Network operators may deploy the various components to provide a user's terminal with the desired service or combination of services. The components are commonly deployed on platforms accessible by the user terminals.
Issues exist where users desire to change their services and/or where users physically move between platforms. Not all network operators use the same component platform. Rather, different platforms exist based on at least one of location, services provided, quality of service guarantees, and the like. In that network operators provide different sets of components, users often encounter interruptions in their services between the teardown of old components from their old platform and reconstruction of the services using components in their new platform.
Part of the issue relates to load balancing. However, the issue can be complex as the change from one service platform to another may involve reconfiguration of the components, for example, by taking into account local conditions or locally available content. Additional parts of the issue range from traditional scheduling and resource allocation problems to components that may be in different states, may be transferred from one platform to another, may or may not be activated, subject to local conditions, subject to personalization, and may currently have active communication sessions with user terminals.